Coffee chain

I’m not actually endorsing this Etsy seller, but they do make this coffee keychain, which is nominally related to what I’m talking about today. Also, I like pewter, so you might as well check out their stuff.

So, apparently this happened recently. A Tim Hortons customer decided to pay for the drink of the patron behind him and this paying-for-the-person-behind-you chain lasted for hours and hundreds of customers technically got a free coffee. It’s a nice story, but what I found most interesting about the article was this line:

“It isn’t uncommon for Tim Hortons customers to pay for the next person in line, but this was a real gift,” Michelle Robichaud, a spokeswoman for the company, told the Winnipeg Free Press.

What? This kind of thing happens all the time? Ok, she didn’t say that. She just said that it wasn’t uncommon, which doesn’t mean “all the time.” But it does mean that it isn’t surprising when it happens. And this is interesting to me. I never hear of this happening in a coffeehouse in the US. Granted, most of our coffeehouses here are Starbuckseseses. Apparently, we do have Tim Hortonseseseses in the US, but they’re all on the East Coast or Midwest.

Anyway, this got me wondering, why don’t I hear of things like this in coffeehouses here? Are Tim Hortons customers nicer than Starbucks customers? Perhaps yes, judging by some of the patrons of Starbucks I’ve met. Lots of them are really pretentious and rude (and lots of them aren’t). Maybe we have more pretentious, rude coffee drinkers here in the US, or at least here in SoCal. I wouldn’t really be surprised. Especially since I’m so close to Hollywood and live in the land of shallowness (which seems to breed pretentiousness and rudeness).

AND! this Tim Hortons location was in Canada. Canadians are reputed to be so much nicer than anyone else in the world. Canadian niceness and politeness is legendary. Seriously, the stuff of legend (which is also the name of a really good comic, you should check it out). Maybe that’s why they could have a free coffee chain for hours on end.

Welp…I didn’t really have anywhere I wanted to go with this. I guess I could try starting a free coffee chain myself, but I’m not much for coffeehouses (read: Starbucks; I’m actually a huge fan of Peet’s). They are not an efficient and cost-effective means to obtain good coffee. I normally just brew my own. Yip.